There's this dream she used to have, every once in a while, with no discernable pattern.
It begins the exact same way each time. She finds herself sitting on a porch swing, left foot tucked under her right thigh, the sole of her right foot grazing the floor as she slowly swings back and forth. The floor, polished and softened by many other shoes and naked feet before her, feels like a caress on her skin. The yellow cushion beneath her is thin enough to let her make out the different wooden slates of the bench's seat yet thick enough to make the stay comfortable for hours. Or so she thinks. She doesn't really know how long she's been sitting here but she must have been reading, there's a book opened on her lap.
Her right hand glides over the smooth pages of the book to finger the soft cotton of her short pants; the hem reaches high above her ankle. Like the faded t-shirt she's wearing, it has the worn and comfortable feel of clothes one will keep wearing until they literally fall apart.
She breathes deep, taking in a relieved lungful of unpolluted air. It's summer. She can tell the day has been hot but with the evening settling in, the temperatures have cooled down enough to keep the mosquitoes away yet leave a pleasant residual warmth in the air.
She gazes up at the scenery surrounding her. A short flight of stairs leads up to the porch running the length of the house behind her. A patch of uneven grass opens up to the nearby forest in front of her. There's a body of water glistening on the right with the faint outline of a dock over it. She can't quite make out the finest details in the twilight but it doesn't matter. She likes it here; it's peaceful.
The screen door whines open and swings shut, spilling light outside for a short moment. A beer bottle glistening with beads of moisture enters her line of sight. She wraps her hand around the long tanned fingers holding it, lets them slip slowly away from her loose grasp.
The swing dips under his added weight as his body moulds itself to hers, touching but not pressing. His naked foot hooks up with her swaying ankle, wiggling toes teasing her ticklish skin. His left arm comes to rest on the back of the swing, allowing his fingers to play with her short hair. Her right hand finds its resting place on his thigh. She leans further into him, closes her eyes and smiles against his neck.
It usually ends there, with his chest rising and falling gently beneath her head and his lips mussing her hair with soft kisses while the darkening sky slowly reveals a treasure trove of brightly shining stars. And if she keeps her breath on hold and her eyes screwed shut, she can pretend it won't all go away when she wakes up. Well, except for that one time when her hand slowly moved further up his thigh and her tongue traced the outline of his jaw, forgotten beer bottle thumping on the wooden floor, and she woke up wriggling in her bed from a very vivid wet dream that left her holed up in her lab with lame excuses for days, afraid that the slightest touch from him would be her undoing.
But that's not what happened tonight and the two nights before.
Three nights in a row, an oddity in itself, she waited for the whine and thwack of the screen door that brings him to her. And waited. And waited. Until she started shivering from the cold of the growing darkness around her and realized he wasn't coming out.
She knows 'he' is Jack. She knows she's at his never-seen cabin. She knows it's more of a fantasy than a dream and she should let it go sooner rather than later. She knows all of that and yet she can't keep wondering why the dream has to change.
Maybe it's just a result of her feet being cold for real. After all, how many times did she end up dreaming about bathrooms and toilets when her overfilled bladder was sending warning signals to her unconscious mind?
She glances at the warm body sleeping on the other side of the bed about a foot away from her, sensing the form more than actually seeing it in the dark bedroom. She knows she could cuddle up to him, warm her cold feet, seek comfort. That's what she did the two previous nights. Yeah. Sigh.
She turns her head away and goes back to staring at the invisible outline of her bedroom door, slowly rubbing her feet together; cold feet were the reason she used to sleep with socks on.
Sleep seemingly intent on eluding her, she slinks out of bed and pads out of the bedroom, the short-pile carpet chafing her sensitive skin unlike the smooth surface of her kitchen tiles. She makes her way without hesitation through the well-known geography of her house and ends up before her fridge, her eyes adjusting to real shapes and forms with the streetlights streaming through the room from the light- curtained windows. Three diet sodas, two beer bottles, a withered lump of butter in a crumpled paper, ketchup, mustard and left-over Chinese; her fridge is near empty, at least that's not so much different than it used to be.
She grabs one of the beer bottles and places its cool relief against her throbbing forehead. Hot head and cold feet, maybe she's coming down with a virus. She leans back heavily into the countertop, staring absently at the fridge before her. She needs to fix it; the light stays on even with the door closed. She only realized it recently, it's not like it's so easy to find that out from an otherwise opaque airtight container. Takes experimentation and a fiber optic snake camera that, by the way, she has yet to return to its rightful owner, the US Air Force. Maybe she could fix it now. It should keep her mind and hands busy for at least a good five minutes.
She opens the door again to take a look at the switch and finds herself staring at the now lonely beer bottle inside. She thinks it's staring back at her.
"Hey," she croaks and feels the thwack of the screen door die against her back.
She can be so fucking stupid sometimes.
TE
Story Notes: Set: season 8
Spoilers: up to Endgame
Classification: angst
Pairing: Sam/Jack, Sam/Pete
Archive: Samandjack, yes
Spoilers: up to Endgame
Classification: angst
Pairing: Sam/Jack, Sam/Pete
Archive: Samandjack, yes
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]